More Bees & Bread

This Saturday my high school class is having its 20th reunion (thank you to the lady from the park who acted shocked when I told her and said I looked 29. I guess the face lift really paid off) and I'm sad to say I won't be there. Yes, I'm one of the few people out there who loved her high school. I had dedicated and interesting teachers, and really cool friends. I should mention here that I didn't go to public school. My school is a pretty well-known private Brooklyn school that does things like have Bertolt Brecht Day, where we ate German food and performed his plays. We had a smoking lounge too, and you were allowed to smoke in front of the school, but if you were in 7th grade, you had to go around the corner to smoke so no one would see you (the school goes k-12). Mike Diamond from the Beastie Boys was a senior when I was in 8th grade and he would throw french fries at us eighth graders who dared to try and smoke in front of the front door with the seniors. It was good times all around, and I hope to make the next reunion.

Yes, more sporadic posting I'm afraid. I've been working on designing the new Rose & Duke line (entirely sewn from scratch children's clothing, that won't be sewn entirely by me for once) and researching manufacturers. Aside from that, there's been a little more stitching going on for Abby:


I bought the blank tea towel fabric from reprodepot, and sewed some ric-rack along the bottom edges. I also got some great amigurumi patterns from a new friend over at Ravelry (I sent her a really good Japanese pattern book for her to copy from in exchange for the patterns she designed and sent me copies of). I made a marshmellow man and a sour apple.

The apple is missing his leaf and the marshmellow man is supposed to be a cupcake, but I think he looks more like a toasted marshmellow instead. He reminds me of the marshmellow man that I got as a gift when I bought something from Chet and Dot.

MY OVEN SUCKS. I have a thermometer in there, and sometimes you have to turn the heat to 550 to get it to reach 450 and sometimes you have to set it at 420 to get to 450. There's no telling what will happen once you put the bread inside. In addition, my dough rising is pretty incosistant as well. I don't know if it's the crazy Texas weather which changes so quickly, or if something else is going on, but half the time the dough is nice and wet and it rises perfectly and looks like this
and when it comes out this wet and flat on top, the bread comes out like this This is the light wheat bread by the way. I've also tried the olive bread and my favorite, the Chris Kimball (of Cook's Illustrated) sandwhich bread:
This is super tasty, but like all the other loaves- not very tall. I have no idea how to get a taller loaf so that one can eat a more normal-sized sandwich.
I also got a wild hare and tried my hand at homemade orecchiette (which is a bitch to remember how to spell) because the recipe in the recent Italian issue of Gourmet sounded sooo easy. While it wasn't necessarily difficult at all, it took forever. I spent half of a nap (Harlan's nap) cutting and pressing each little piece together. It tasted really nice with some Romano cheese, chopped parsley, and oven roasted tomatoes from the Whole Foods olive bar. The texture of the orecchiette was soft but not sticky or slimy. I think however, that I will continue to buy it from now on instead.